Recording Handel's Messiah

This has to be one of the highlights of my career.  The performance took place at St James Anglican Church, King St Sydney.  This is a very traditional old church with a paid church choir.  They augmented the choir with some extra singers and hired a bunch of Baroque musicians.  I didn't know that the Messiah has been performed with lots of different size ensembles.  The original performance took place in Dublin with a small baroque ensemble in something like 1742.  This performance was a similar version, with only about 6 violins, 3 violas, 2 cellos, 1 bass, 2 trumpets, timpani, organ and harpsicord.  There were only about 20 people in the choir.  Some recordings have hundreds of voices and a huge orchestra.

So after chatting to Classic FM engineers it became evident that this was a much bigger job than i expected.  A stereo pair just wasn't going to cut it.  I multitracked it so it gave me a chance to experiment with several different mic techniques.

So here's what I had - 

On a stereo bar just behind the conductor were a pair of spaced omnis -  MKH20's

Plus a pair or ORTF cardioids - MKH 40's

Plus an ms pair - MKG 30 fig 8 and and MKH 40 cardiod.

This gave a choice between the spaced omnis and the ms pair as my main stereo pair.  The cardiods were there to wind into the mix if I went with the spaced omnis.  The purpose being to give a bit more direct sound if needed.  The capsules were as close to the omnis as possible in order to keep good phase.

Then I had 4 MKH40s spaced across in front of the choir, one in front of each section of the choir.  The 2 middle ones were angled to pick up the soloists who moved into position in front of these mics.

I tried putting 2 outriggers as suggested, position out wide in front of the orchestra but found that these didn't really add much except noise.

I put a spot mic on the organ, timpani, and double bass.

we set up out the back in the vestry with a 16 channel Allen and Heath desk recording onto a Mackie HDR and monitoring with a little set of Genelecs.

The performance wasn't perfect but it was really good.  The musicians were spot on.  The only thing that let it down were some of the soloists.  But they are really difficult pieces to sing.

And most importantly, did we get a free feed?  Yes!  We got soup under the church.  There was a choice of chicken or fish soup.  I chose chicken and it definitely had pieces of chicken in it, but it tasted like fish.  I think whoever made the soup got them a bit mixed up.